Battle of Los Angeles
|URL = }} The Battle of Los Angeles, also known as The Great Los Angeles Air Raid, is the name given by contemporary sources to the rumored attack by Japan and subsequent anti-aircraft artillery barrage which took place from late February 24 to early February 25, 1942, over Los Angeles, California. The incident occurred less than three months after the United States entered World War II in response to the Imperial Japanese Navy's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and one day after the bombardment of Ellwood on February 23. Initially, the target of the aerial barrage was thought to be an attacking force from Japan, but speaking at a press conference shortly afterward, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox called the incident a "false alarm". Newspapers of the time published a number of reports and speculations of a cover-up. When documenting the incident in 1949, the United States Coast Artillery Association identified a meteorological balloon sent up at 1:00 a.m. that "started all the shooting" and concluded that "once the firing started, imagination created all kinds of targets in the sky and everyone joined in". In 1983, the U.S. Office of Air Force History attributed the event to a case of "war nerves" triggered by a lost weather balloon and exacerbated by stray flares and shell bursts from adjoining batteries. Background Anger and paranoia over the Imperial Japanese Navy's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941 and the United States entry into World War II the next day intensified across the West Coast of the United States over the next few months. In Juneau, residents were told to cover their windows for the nightly blackout after rumors of Japanese submarines lurking by the southeast Alaskan coast.Juneau During WWII Panel The Empty Chair: The Forced Removal and Relocation of Juneau's Japanese, 1941-1951 Rumors spread of a Japanese aircraft carrier cruising off the coast of the San Francisco Bay Area, resulting in the city of Oakland to close their schools and to issue a blackout; civil defense sirens provided from Oakland Police Department (OPD) cars blared through the area, and radio silence was ordered.Battle of Los Angeles In Seattle, the city also imposed a blackout of all buildings and vehicles, and the owners who left the lights on in their buildings had their businesses smashed by a mob of 2,000 residents. Rumors were bad enough that 500 United States Army troops moved into the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California to defend the famed Hollywood facility and nearby factories against enemy sabotage or air attacks. As the United States began mobilizing for total war, anti-aircraft guns were set up, bunkers were built, and air raid precautions were drilled into the populace all over the country. Several merchant ships were attacked by Japanese submarines in the U.S. coastal waters of the West Coast especially during the last half of the month of December 1941 through February 1942. As paranoia continued to mount, on February 23, 1942 at 7:15 pm during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's fireside chats, [[Japanese submarine I-17|Japanese submarine I-17]] surfaced near Santa Barbara and shelled Ellwood Oil field in Goleta. Although damage was minimal, only $500 in property damage and luckily no one was injured, the attack had lasting consequences as the West Coast residents believed that the Japanese were going to storm their beaches at any minute (eventually less than four months later, Japan bombed Dutch Harbor in Unalaska, Alaska and landed troops in the Aleutian Islands of Kiska and Attu). Alarms raised On February 24, 1942, Naval Intelligence issued a warning that an attack could be expected within the next ten hours. That evening, a large number of flares and blinking lights were reported from the vicinity of defense plants. An alert was called at 7:18 pm, and was lifted at 10:23 pm. Renewed activity began early in the morning of the 25th. Air raid sirens sounded at 2:25 am throughout Los Angeles County. A total blackout was ordered and thousands of Air Raid Wardens were summoned to their positions. At 3:16 am the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing .50 caliber machine guns and 12.8-pound anti-aircraft shells into the air at reported aircraft; over 1,400 shells would eventually be fired. Pilots of the 4th Interceptor Command were alerted but their aircraft remained grounded. The artillery fire continued sporadically until 4:14 am. The "all clear" was sounded and the blackout order lifted at 7:21 am. Several buildings and vehicles were damaged by shell fragments, and five civilians died as an indirect result of the anti-aircraft fire: three killed in car accidents in the ensuing chaos and two of heart attacks attributed to the stress of the hour-long action.Niiya, Brian (1993). Japanese American History: An A-to-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present. VNR AG, p. 112. The incident was front-page news along the U.S. Pacific coast and across the nation. Press response Within hours of the end of the air raid, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox held a press conference, saying the entire incident was a false alarm due to anxiety and "war nerves." Knox's comments were followed by statements from the Army the next day''Los Angeles Times'', 27 February 1942 that reflected General George C. Marshall's supposition that the incident might have been caused by enemy agents using commercial airplanes in a psychological warfare campaign to generate panic. Some contemporary press outlets suspected a cover-up. An editorial in the Long Beach Independent wrote, "There is a mysterious reticence about the whole affair and it appears that some form of censorship is trying to halt discussion on the matter." Speculation was rampant as to invading airplanes and their bases. Theories included a secret base in northern Mexico as well as Japanese submarines stationed offshore with the capability of carrying planes. Others speculated that the incident was either staged or exaggerated to give coastal defense industries an excuse to move further inland.Los Angeles Times, "Information, Please", 26 Feb. 1942, p. 1 Representative Leland Ford of Santa Monica called for a Congressional investigation, saying, "...none of the explanations so far offered removed the episode from the category of 'complete mystification' ... this was either a practice raid, or a raid to throw a scare into 2,000,000 people, or a mistaken identity raid, or a raid to lay a political foundation to take away Southern California's war industries."Los Angeles Times, "Knox Assailed on 'False Alarm': West Coast legislators Stirred by Conflicting Air-Raid Statements" 27 Feb. 1942, p. 1 Attribution The Japanese government, after the war ended, declared that they had flown no airplanes over Los Angeles during the war.The Battle of L.A. turns 75: When a panicked city fought a Japanese invasion that never happened LA Times In 1983, the U.S. Office of Air Force History concluded that an analysis of the evidence points to meteorological balloons as the cause of the initial alarm: UFOlogy A photo published in the Los Angeles Times on February 26, 1942, has been cited by some ufologists and conspiracy theorists as part of evidence of an extraterrestrial visitation. They assert that the photo clearly shows searchlights focused on an alien spaceship; however, the photo was heavily modified by photo retouching prior to publication, a routine practice in graphic arts of the time intended to improve contrast in black and white photos. Los Angeles Times writer Larry Harnisch noted that the retouched photo along with faked newspaper headlines were presented as true historical material in trailers for the film Battle: Los Angeles. Harnisch commented, "if the publicity campaign wanted to establish UFO research as nothing but lies and fakery, it couldn't have done a better job." Commemoration Every February, the Fort MacArthur Museum, located at the entrance to Los Angeles Harbor, hosts an entertainment event called "The Great LA Air Raid of 1942." See also * The Bombardment of Ellwood, which occurred the previous day. *Attacks on North America during World War II * 1941, a 1979 film by Steven Spielberg, loosely based on the Battle of Los Angeles. *Pearl Harbor References External links * UFO theory * "The Battle of Los Angeles" at Saturday Night Uforia * San Francisco virtual museum article * The Army Air Forces in World War II Category:1942 in Los Angeles Category:1942 in military history Category:History of Los Angeles Category:Military history of California Category:United States home front during World War II Category:UFO sightings in the United States Category:Friendly fire incidents of World War II Category:February 1942 events